25 Sep 2006

Duncan's dental situation; Part 2

Thanks everyone for sharing your advice and experiences in reply to my last post about Duncan's teeth. It's one of his baby teeth that's been affected and we've been told that for first teeth, only extractions are performed under GA. We are hoping to get him dealt with in the next few days. He will definitely need a GA, it would be much too frightening for him to have the procedure under local anaesthetic. Thankfully, all our medical needs are met by the NHS, so I don't need to worry about insurance, and the local children's department is excellent.

Poor Duncan has been very unwell over the past 3 days, with a slight fever, pain in the tooth and swelling in his jaw. I tried to give him some ibuprofen with limited success at first. He hates taking medicine, so I had to hide it in his drink and get the medicine:juice ratio just right. For 2 nights he cried and whimpered in pain almost all night, and I had to lie right beside him. He was so confused by the whole experience that he didn't know where to put himself and flitted from one bed to another, desperately trying to get comfortable. Last night, I managed to give him a bigger dose of pain killer before bed and he slept right through. I'm glad to see that the swelling has reduced a bit too.

As usual when he's ill, he is very cuddly, and lies beside me or on my lap and gets upset when I leave his side. Yesterday he was feeling well enough to play with his trains and watch Thomas films on YouTube. Gordon spent the morning fixing Lady's computer which I had messed up completely by deleting a system file, then trying to fix it using a Windows disk I found lying around and then I ...well, I just cocked the whole thing up and he had quite a job sorting it all out from scratch. Afterwards, Lady spent ages playing with a French CDROM. Perhaps she's trying to learn a some French for when we meet up with our HE friends and their long-term guest. Thomas and Lady spent ages on the trampoline yesterday too. They are both very good on it. Thomas can do all sorts of fancy manoeuvres. I must see if I can get him into a gymnastics class or something, if he's old enough. I think he'd enjoy that.

While the children were all occupied yesterday afternoon, I started teaching Gordon some of the Salsa moves I'd learnt at my class. He was doing great at the end and the magical music by the Afro-Cuban All Stars helped. His Jamaican and Cuban roots were certainly in evidence!

It did me the world of good too, since I'd been feeling bad about Duncan and my liability in what happening to him. I also have been reading too much stuff about autism in the media, and that's always guaranteed to wind me up since there's so much balderdash printed. Though I read a lovely article today which counters the prevailing attitude; Understanding Autism by Kevin Leitch. I hope lots of people see it and reconsider what ideas they might have formed about autism.

About this Blog

Curious, enthusiastic and affectionate mother of 3, one of whom is perfectly autistic, I find great joy in each of my children and strive to help them learn and grow in an atmosphere of love and acceptance of their differences, difficulties and strengths.

The children's pseudonyms reflect my autistic son's one time love of all things Thomas the Tank Engine.

This is my personal blog so all posts and opinions shared are my own and not those of my employer.